George A. Romero preps new flick (with underwater zombies!)

When flesh-ripping royalty George A. Romero returned to his beloved zombies after a long moratorium with 2005’s Land of the Dead, it wasn’t really clear why. His undisputed masterpiece Dawn of the Dead had already undergone a jazzy Hollywood remake, and Danny Boyle had effectively retooled the genre’s bag of tricks with 28 Days Later. “Thirty-seven years after he first brought his hungry macabre flesh-stalkers to the screen in Night of the Living Dead,” the critic Owen Gleiberman wrote at the time, “Romero may be the last person alive who still thinks they’re a metaphor for something important."

Still, even though Land of the Dead came and went without much notice,
that didn’t deter the genre maestro from taking on Diary of the Dead
just two years later, which made less than $1 million at the
U.S. box office. Either oblivious to this fact or, more likely,
content to do whatever he pleases, Romero has begun filming yet another
new zombie flick, this time about an island community whose dead
relatives come back to snack on the loved ones they left behind.

According to Variety, the movie will stake out new moral ground as
well, including the island’s debate over whether to re-kill the zombies
or hold out for a cure. More important, a production honcho apparently
involved with the film told MovieSet.com that underwater zombies are in play. “They’re
swimming, grabbing people’s legs, pulling them down,” he said. "It’s a
lot of fun.”